Category: Excellence

Today, when this song came on, I settled into it. And allowed it to take me where it would. There are songs that serve as reminders of certain phases in your life. Some songs bring with them forgotten feelings…whiffs of something precious, happy or sad.

But this song isn’t like that. I don’t have a strong feeling attached to it. But it does take me back to a time which I can now say was the start of something that redefined me forever.

I started really listening to this song around 1999 or 2000. I was a copyeditor for a computer magazine back then.

I would listen to the song often. I savored “Can you tell…a smile from a veil?” and “Did they get you to trade your heroes for ghosts?”

And then I hit that bit, “Did you exchange a walk-on part in a war for a lead role in a cage?”

It just caught my fancy for some reason. It intrigued me. And I found myself writing it on a piece of paper and pinning it to the board next to my seat at work. I would look at it from time to time. One of the bosses even peered at it once, and immediately went behind a veil. He knew he was in a cage while all he wanted to do was wage wars. I could see that, for him. But it didn’t seem like a thing that should have been about my life, my work. I probably saw it like a poster…something out there in bright colors on a wall. But outside of me.

Today as I listened to the song again I allowed myself to register this: that time of my work life—with 4-5 years of work experience—was sowing the seeds of what would happen five years later. I would discard the lead role in a cage for a walk-on part in a war. Except the walk-on part would become the lead role, but certainly not in a cage.

It is not nice to call entrepreneurship war. But whether I realized it or not back then I was stepping into what would be as consuming, as damaging, as exhilarating and as strategic and tactical as war.

Maybe Pink Floyd planted that seed in my head all those years ago. Or maybe I already came pre-planted with a seed which Floyd then watered everyday. Whatever the case, I know this verse was a catalyst. And Tom Peters was showing me the right ways of being a professional, of being a company.

You connect the dots by looking back, to paraphrase Steve Jobs. Yes, while waging wars you are just doing your best to take the surprises out of uncertainty. But once you have come some way you can start seeing how the dots connect.

Pink Floyd. Tom Peters. Entrepreneurship.

When I said no to a lead role in a cage. And no, I didn’t exchange my heroes for ghosts!

When you sit down to write a post on the last day of the year, what would it be about? It would be about looking back at the year, or looking forward to the next.

But I have no idea what this post is about to say. Let’s see what comes out.I have had the urge to write about some of the cool unbelievable things that have happened to me this year. So I will start with that.

Mighty Fan Girl Moments

This was a year when I stepped outside of my shyness to approach Internet influencers (nothing less than celebs, I would say). When I had to make a sales trip to the US in May 2017, I planned it so I could attend an event that Michael Hrostoski was going to conduct along with Molly Butler (it was called, Follow Your Love). But as things turned out, the event got cancelled, and I didn’t get to meet him. I have followed Hrostoski ever since I got to know of a book he wrote in 2013 called, August.

It’s been almost four years of having watched him evolve, go through hardship, heartbreak and stellar growth. And build a community of highly evolved individuals creating breakthrough businesses. I came this close to meeting him in person, and then it didn’t happen.

That was disappointing, to say the least. I was going to leave it at that. But, my co-founder, Abhinav, who had helped me plan my trip around Michael’s event, wouldn’t let me. He said, write to him. I laughed. “He won’t even see it,” I said. Even so, I took his advice and messaged Michael. On my way back from the States, while spending a long layover at Heathrow, I got a ping. It was Michael, and not a bot (he sent me a pic to prove that! How incredibly sweet!). And we ended up chatting for a while. He even asked me to send him a friend request. This was beyond mind blowing! And since then we have chatted a bit, off and on. And he continues to get awesome-r by the hour.

Following Michael has led me to follow many more interesting people, but the other person from his tribe/fam/community that I have recently started following is his baby brother, David Hrostoski. Who is going places where not many people have gone before. And I have ended up chatting with David as well. Very open, supportive and welcoming.

The other celeb breakthroughs (if I can call it that), happened in September. Like the entire inbound marketing world, I am a fan of Rand Fishkin. Abhinav, who got a selfie with him earlier in the year at Mozcon, was over the moon and told me how down to earth he really is. So I was excited that I could catch his session at INBOUND17. And what’s more, I could also catch his wife, Geraldine DeRuiter’s session at the event. If you have been to her blog, you would also have been equally excited. And I thought, what if I could get a pic with both of them together. I laughed it off, of course.

As things turned out, I watched Rand’s session, and then went off to see Geraldine’s session. Rand, who of course, is Geraldine’s chief cheerleading officer, was there too. Just a few feet away from me. And I found myself going up to him, shaking hands, and asking him if he and Geraldine and he would be willing to take a pic with me when she was free. Of course, of course, he said.

And that’s what happened after her session. Abhinav managed to catch the session too, in between his many meetings at the event. So he got to be in the same frame as Rand one more time!

Next up, Scott Brinker. At one of the INBOUND17 keynotes, it was announced that Scott Brinker was joining HubSpot. Here I had been ruing the fact that we were going to miss his event, MarTech, which was just a weekend after INBOUND17, also in Boston. The announcement meant that he was in the crowd that day. This is a coup for HubSpot, and very exciting for marketing automation, in general. I tweeted to him the next day requesting a meeting. Unfortunately he was not around. But SCOTT BRINKER replied to me! Yeah, yeah, call me a silly fan girl.

Those were my brushes with celebrities this year. A damn good year, I should say!What else? Let’s go from meeting excellent people to experiencing excellence.

When Excellence Moves You

We get some moments where someone’s work simply moves you. You can see their hard work, their anguish, their grit distill into to a few minutes of incredible performance on screen or the pages of a book you want to hug hoping that the warmth reaches the author in some way. Here are some I can immediately remember:

Mostly anything I have heard Brene Brown say this year, live or on Youtube

Meeting Adam Kuczynski, the founder of TME, Poland. (The start of TME, literally from the streets of Poland. His passion to explore markets in Old Delhi and similar ones in Africa. His ethical way of doing business, and the decision to stay away from specific verticals that may not have everything clean and transparent. His willingness to be patient to grow the India business.)

The way our team is developing an idea we put together from various sessions at INBOUND17, and is very close to building a brand new service offering!

I am sure there are more, but my memory fails me.As I look forward to 2018, I hope for more such moving moments to happen to me (and this time around I hope to write them down as they happen). I hope I get to meet more people I look upto, or can look up to. I hope to keep shedding my ‘hold myself back’ attitude so I can be in more of these moments of sheer pleasure.